The Wild (2006)

The Wild Synopsis

Disney redoes their countertops with the plot from Madagascar.

There's only one word I can think of to describe Disney's new movie The Wild, and that's despicable. This movie makes Shark Tale look original. It was bad enough when someone sort of kind of took Finding Nemo's premise of CGI fish and turned it into a bad comedy starring Will Smith in which fish inexplicably used underwater elevators, but this is worse. Much worse.

The Wild is a blatant ripoff of Madagascar right down to its core. Zoo animals living in a New York Zoo who come to life when the crowds leave? Check. Mission into the city to find one of their missing friends? Check. Cowardly Lion? Check. Awkward Giraffe? Check. Crazy scenes involving an animal hi-jacked Ocean liner? Triple Check. There's not an original moment or thought in the entire trailer. The only thing that makes this movie even slightly different from Madagascar is that they have a Koala.

Now you’re probably wondering… wait a minute, which one went into production first? Maybe Madagascar is the real ripoff here. Irrelevant. Though there’s been talk that they’re both based on the same pitch, or that The Wild went into production first, the reality of this is that Madagascar got it done first. That leaves The Wild out in the cold. Once Disney (or whoever it is that’s making this thing for Disney) saw that Madagascar was going to beat them to the punch, the film should have been shelved, or relegated to Disney’s extensive straight-to-video collection. Releasing this in theaters with a Disney stamp of approval accomplishes nothing, except to make Disney look really really bad.

Someone’s going to be left out in the cold. Several very talented and deserving people, in fact. There’s no avoiding it. There are simply too many talented actors vying for five Best Actor slots this year, so on the morning of the Oscar nominations, there could be as many as 10 worthy performers looking at the five nominees and wondering why they aren’t in that exclusive group.

This is the first time we’re going on record with official Oscar predictions, breaking films down into Frontrunners, Contenders, Dark Horses and Longshots. We still have a number of films left to screen between now and the end of the year. To date, here’s where I think all of the top films stand.

Again, it’s September. Toronto will give way to the New York Film Festival, which will give way to AFI. There are plenty more films to screen, and more performances to enjoy. But for the moment, I believe I’ve seen two contenders… and even two frontrunners.

Between these four fests, cinephiles and critics will have a chance to preview titles that are sure to be the most talked about of award season. We've sorted through the buzz of Telluride, Venice, TIFF and NYFF to distill what five movies you must see to stay in the conversation this year.

I’m in Toronto once again, covering my eighth consecutive TIFF. It’s always a thrill to be at the center of the fest, but I know (from experience) how overwhelming it can be. So I jumped on a podcast with my great friend and colleague Erik Davis of Movies.com to preview the 10 films that we can not wait to see in Toronto.

As expected, TIFF (as Toronto’s summarily dubbed) unveiled a healthy slate of programming in its first initial announcement, part of the run up to this year’s robust film festival. (The dates of the 2014 Toronto Fest are Sept. 4 to 14, and we will be on the ground covering every inch of the festival, per usual.)

Honestly, it’s the most quintessential image one could have expected from the film, which will chronicle the 1,100-mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trailer taken by author Cheryl Strayed, who made the trek as a way of coping with the downward spiral her adult life had taken, following the death of her mother, her failed marriage and a bout with heroin addiction.

Witherspoon will not only headline the feature called simply Wild, but also is producing along with her Pacific Standard partner Bruna Papandrea (Warm Bodies), and River Road Entertainment's Bill Pohlad (12 Years a Slave).

Witherspoon and Bruna Papandrea will co-produce the based-on-fact story of Cheryl Strayed, a woman who – in an effort to recover from her mother’s death and a crumbling marriage – hiked a 1,100-mile trail that stretches the Pacific Crest Trail from California to Washington.